APPEASEMENT IS COUNTERPRODUCTIVE: An excellent piece by David Gelertner in the Weekly Standard titled "The Suicide of the Palestinians." Here are some excerpts:
In short, the Palestinian response to Israel's generous peace offer was, "Drop dead." How could that possibly have happened? A trick question--because the obvious but wrong answer is so close to the right one that it's hard to tune the right one in. You have to fiddle the dial back and forth. Yet the difference between the two is crucial. The "lesson of appeasement" is not that appeasement is futile. Appeasement is not futile, it is dangerous. Israel's enemies claim that Israel herself provoked the ongoing Palestinian pogrom, and in a sense they might well be right. Outlaws interpret an openhanded offer as weakness, not generosity. They interpret weakness as an incitement to violence.
...to a significant number of Palestinians, the offer obviously said: "We are weak; you have nothing to fear; attack." Appeasement doesn't merely fail to prevent catastrophe, it provokes catastrophe.
...Jews have as much right as anyone to settle on the West Bank. But it long seemed to me (as to many other American Jews) that, leaving right and wrong out of it, the settlements were causing Israel more grief than they were worth and ought to be stopped. But everything has changed. Who in his right mind could still believe today that to stop building new settlements (or even to abandon old ones) would appease the Palestinians? On the contrary: Such a move is likely to be dangerous, as Barak's offer turned out to be.
We now know what Palestinians want, and what they think of Israelis. After all, what exactly is the point of sending killers to massacre children at random? What do you accomplish? You impose hatred. You ask Israel, in effect: What do we need to do to make you all (not some of you; everyone) hate us? To make you unable to look at a Palestinian without revulsion? To force you eventually to take the terrible step of setting up enclaves where Arabs are banned? Palestinians don't want to live peaceably among Israelis; the natural conclusion is that they think about Israelis as they choose for Israelis to think about them.